By Lloyd Gideon Makonese – Researcher/Academic and Public Health and Health Policy/Systems Expert (HIV & Drugs)

An important practical dimension must be acknowledged when discussing devolution, diaspora engagement, and skills exchange.

These ideas are not merely theoretical constructs or aspirational policy suggestions. They are already being tested on the ground. Over the past ten months, this writer has worked closely within the leadership of two anti-drug initiatives operating in Zimbabwe, engaging directly with local authorities, community structures, professionals, and national stakeholders.

This experience offers a clear and instructive lesson: meaningful collaboration is possible, but only where local leadership actively creates space for it.

What has made these initiatives viable is not abundance of resources, but openness. Local authorities and leadership structures that have approached collaboration with arms wide open have enabled professionals, including those from the diaspora, to contribute their time, expertise, and mentorship in ways that are practical and immediately beneficial.

Where leadership is receptive, coordination becomes easier, trust develops more quickly, and interventions move from planning into action without unnecessary delay.

This lived experience reinforces a critical point for provincial governments operating under the devolution agenda. Zimbabwe’s diaspora represents a vast and largely untapped reservoir of goodwill, technical expertise, and professional commitment.

Many are keen to return, even temporarily, to support service rebuilding across health, social care, education, and vocational sectors. Their motivation is rarely financial.

Instead, it is grounded in a desire to contribute to national recovery, institutional strengthening, and community well-being.

Structured short-term attachment programmes, including voluntary three-month placements, become especially compelling in this context.

They offer a practical mechanism through which provinces can benefit from free labour, specialist knowledge, and hands-on mentorship, while local staff gain confidence, exposure, and skills embedded within their everyday practice.

Whether on hospital wards, in rehabilitation services, in community programmes addressing substance use, or within technical trades, the impact of such exchanges is immediate and relational rather than abstract.

However, this can only happen where provincial and local leadership deliberately cultivates a culture of welcome. Bureaucratic resistance, gatekeeping, or politicised suspicion can quickly discourage even the most committed professionals.

Conversely, leadership that signals openness, clarity of purpose, and shared ownership sends a powerful message that collaboration is valued and protected.

Greendale community is one such an example in Harare that opened doors to such an approach leading to the creation of the Greendale Community Anti-Drugs Taskforce. The initiative takes lead in its application of the Diaspora partnership, collaboration with locals community membership and the Devolution strategic approaches to address the scourge of the drugs pandemic that is affecting not only the district, but the country and the SADC region.

Devolution provides the governance framework for this openness to flourish. It allows provinces to identify their own needs, reach out to relevant expertise, and integrate external support into locally defined priorities.

When provincial authorities actively engage diaspora professionals as partners rather than outsiders, development ceases to be something done to communities and becomes something built with them.

This approach aligns directly with the broader Vision 2030 agenda. National transformation will not be achieved through central planning alone, nor through political rhetoric divorced from practice.

It will be realised through countless acts of collaboration at provincial and district level, where skills are shared, systems are strengthened, and trust is rebuilt.

By embracing diaspora engagement as a practical extension of devolution, provincial governments can accelerate service improvement while reinforcing a shared national purpose.

In this sense, openness itself becomes a development tool. When leadership welcomes collaboration, Zimbabwe’s global human capital is activated, and Vision 2030 moves closer to being not just a national aspiration, but a lived and collective achievement.